Search giant Google continues to expand its monopoly on data control by introducing more new services. [...] It all sounds rather Orwellian, but the truth is that Google is slowly killing any form of privacy people have on the Internet.

On August 10, 2009 democracy activists from Uzbekistan started an open-ended hunger strike in front of Radio Liberty headquarters in Washington DC with the demand that it offer its air time for all leaders of Uzbek political opposition.

While Obama administration officials and the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) representatives insist that U.S. foreign policy towards Africa isn't being militarized, the evidence seems to suggest otherwise.

A bloody trail that leads straight to the Indonesian army [...] For the Indonesian army, illegal timber and gold in West Papua is regarded as plunder, with scant regard for the rights of the West Papuan population.

The Obama administration deserves praise for its response to the coup in Honduras. It sends a hopeful signal that Washington's traditional support for such undemocratic power grabs has ended [...]the Honduran military still receives millions in U.S. aid.

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

[...]To sum it all up, the whole picture looks like nothing less than an Afghan version of a Sergio Leone-directed, Ennio Morricone-scored The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Move over, Spaghetti Western, and call it a deadly Spaghetti Eastern.

Forget the mainstream media's obsession with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban or the war on terror. These are diversions compared to the high-stakes, hardcore geopolitical game that follows what flows along the pipelines of the planet.

During the Bush years, the US's "expeditionary" military came remarkably close to resembling an updated version of the French Foreign Legion in the ways it was conceived and used by those in power - and even, to some extent, in its makeup.

I saw Americans all in Chicago, and nothing but Americans. I saw not a trace of ethnic-self consciousness anywhere in that crowd. This is what America is now and we are strong because of that diversity. We proved it. [...]